Archive for March, 2008

Have you have ever wanted to share a group of your really good photos, but your pictures were too big to post to your favorite photo sharing site? When I shoot 150 - 200 photos on a trip with my DSLR, family and friends always want a copy of what I am shooting.  That started my search for a free and simple way to crunch my photos, fast! I stumbled upon KStudio’s Resize!, a batch image resize program that resizes your images to various parameters. Resize! does a great job of saving time when uploading or burning the photos that you want to share.  I could fire up my Photoshop Elements (or the Creative Suite version of Photoshop) and Aperture application to resize photos, but Resize! really makes that unnecessary. The program’s interface is simple while still providing robust options.

For years Firefox users have been able to enjoy the many benefits of the StumbleUpon toolbar, which allows users to experience the StumbleUpon social bookmarking site in all its glory. Now thanks to Stumbi developer Eli Kaufman, Safari users can get much of the same functionalities that have made the Firefox add-on a wildly popular download.

StumbleUpon is like channel surfing for the web. The site, which ranks in the top 500 on Alexa Traffic Rankings, lets you specify a list of categories you’re interested in, whether it be art, music, humor, technology or a slew of others, and then jump randomly between popular sites in those areas. Not uncommon for a social bookmarking site, Stumble features user profiles and friends lists. Once you start Stumbling, you may be surprised at how addictive it is.

Debates and arguments have always been brewing with regards to desktop versus web apps. While one camp will argue about convenience and having your data available everywhere, the other will side with speed, privacy and reliability that desktop apps can provide.

While I seriously doubt the holy war will end anytime soon, here’s an app that will provide some middleground. It’s called Google Notifier for OS X.

Way back in April of 2007, I reviewed djay v1.2 for MacApper. Since then, djay has hit v2.0 and received many improvements, and new features. Among these improvements include a new interface, live undo/redo, and an improved audio engine.

If you looked at djay when it was still at v1.2 and found it wasn’t for you, I recommend you take a second look. You can tell that a lot of work has went into improving this application. Make sure to watch the review and look for the giveaway at the end of this post. UPDATE: A new video has been uploaded, which fixes the problem with the sound.

Time Machine was an awesome addition to OS X, and it works brilliantly. However, to me, it can be a bit annoying to have Time Machine in the Dock; I’m always hitting it when I don’t mean to. So to solve this little problem, I’ve found a better place to keep it…Finder!

Time Machine is part of the Finder (thinking a little outside the box), as it is basically an extension of the Finder’s functionality, so why not make it a little bit more part of the Finder - Drag the Time Machine icon, from the Applications folder onto the top pane of the Finder window, et voilà! - you can remove it from your dock, and still have a quick way back to the past

Google the phrase “execute Automator workflows” and you’ll find tips on incorporating workflows into existing applications or running them from the command line. The Apple document Mac 101: Automator will give you the basics on saving your workflow as something other than a workflow, but let’s talk about the ways that we incorporate Automator into the everyday use of our Macs. Usually, if you’re a mouse person, you’ll double-click the workflow, Automator will open, and you’ll click the play button to run. In this post I’ve included some time-saving ways to execute Automator actions and incorporate them into the Finder.

Last week I reviewed GarageSale, the very useful app for selling things on eBay. iwascoding was nice enough to give us five licenses to giveaway. We had a whopping 102 entries, and now we have five winners.

The winners are: Tanner (a bike, they sell well on eBay), Stuart (a branding iron, you always need one of those!), Billie (a whole box of things, this should help you a lot!), Mr. Bond (some spying gear, probably classified…) and Ben (BlueMic Snowball, I have one of those, too!).

Working on your Mac these days can be quite exhilarating; with all the wonderful apps and tools at your disposal, multi-tasking has become easier than ever. The downside, of course, is that now there are so many things on the go to help us be more organized, more productive, and more efficient with our work that it’s becoming harder and harder to focus on actually doing it. The folks over at Freeverse are here to help, though, with their deceptively simple piece of productivity software called Think.

AppZapper is a great program for all Mac users. Before AppZapper, people always complained that there was never enough room left on their hard drives. When deleting a program with AppZapper, the program is deleted along with its preference files.

This task is not performed without a price. Some people, myself included, do not like to buy one-click applications. I would like to introduce to you the free AppCleaner and AppTrap.

As a contributor to MacApper I’m able to interact with quality software and relay my findings to you, the reader. Every once in a while you come across software that is something special; software that makes you stop and say, “Man, I can do some crazy stuff with this!” iStopMotion2 by Boinx Software is that type of software, allowing users at every skill level to use their Mac for things other than checking email, syncing with iTunes, or shill bidding on eBay. Read the review and check out how to enter for a chance to win one of three licenses of iStopMotion2 Home.

After recently doing some spring cleaning on my iPod Touch during my move from 1.1.3 to 1.1.4, I decided to try a few new applications. One of these applications is called Touchpad Pro, and simply put, it’s a way to easily control your trackpad and keyboard remotely.

Back in January of 2004, Google introduced Google Earth for Mac. As I’m sure many of you have experienced first hand, Google Earth is a program that is basically a virtual globe that allows you to zoom in and out of places all over the world. Since that update though, the interface hasn’t really changed much. If you have ever wished that Google Earth’s interface could get a bit of a boost, now is your chance.

Two years ago, Adam Betts re-designed a few elements of Google Earth’s interface. I just recently came across his blog post, and I thought I would share it with all of you.

Last week I reviewed PhotoPresenter, the premiere slideshow creator on the Mac, and promised our readers a chance to win 1 of 3 software licenses. Without further ado, the winners are Richard, Henry, and rmaspero. The fortunate 3 will receive further instructions via email.

Congrats to the lucky few, and a big thank you to all of our readers who participated in the giveaway! I’d also like to thank Simon from Arizona Software for kindly donating the licenses. PhotoPresenter is one of the biggest bargains available on the Mac. Even if you didn’t win, buy a license today for only 8 bucks from the PhotoPresenter download page.

How many times have you been listening to music on iTunes through your headphones in a quiet location and you inadvertently pull them out of the plug only for the music to continue blasting away through the speakers of your Mac portable? Well personally, this has happened to me a slew of times and the feeling is truly embarrassing. However, Breakaway from [[Alloc]Init] is the simple application that can prevent this from ever happening again.

The lightweight (<6mb) app can make itself at home in your menu bar or in your dock. When it's activated, a tiny icon appears as a menu bar item (by default) in the top part of your screen. Two different icons can tell you if Breakaway senses that your headphones are plugged in or not. In addition, if you have Growl notifications installed on your machine, Breakaway will tap into Growl and you will get a little notification about the status of your headphones.

If you use your Mac for almost everything, why can’t it also replace your alarm clock? There are two great alarm clock applications, Aurora 4 from Metaquark and Awaken 4 from Embraceware. With these apps you can wake up to your own music, or with Aurora, a favorite TV show using EyeTV. I’d like to see your bedside alarm clock do that. They are both easy to use and pretty cheap, but they do have their differences, so which one is right for you?

The first application is Aurora 4. This app just recently went from freeware to shareware, but it added many features in the jump.